The Secret Weapons of the AOL Optimization Team

The Secret Weapons of the
AOL Optimization Team
Dave Artz
Secret Weapon #1:
Apache Mods
4
sec.
2.5
sec.
modconcat
http://code.google.com/p/modconcat/
Once installed, lets you reference any CSS or JS
file on your server like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/optional/path/??
filename1.js,subdirectory/filename2.js,filename3.js
Honors the cache headers of the youngest file
modjsmin
http://code.google.com/p/modjsmin/
Once installed, all JS files are minified on
demand, leaving commented source intact
Ported from Doug
Crockford’s C library
292 KB
40 KB
Original
86% smaller
1.5 sec. faster
moddims
http://code.google.com/p/moddims/
Once installed, lets you reference any image on
your server like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/dims/resize/320x240/quality/90/
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/full-quality-image.jpg
Manipulate image compression levels on the fly
Resize large full quality images to thumbnails
Secret Weapon #2:
Friendly Iframes
The Friendly Iframe
Quarantines blocking JS ads in their own little
bubble so content can continue rendering
When finished loading, text ads are copied to the
parent and pick up CSS styles
Ad creatives can expand out of the frame without
any cross-domain issues
Simple demo of the technique:
http://www.artzstudio.com/files/fif-demo/
Secret Weapon #3:
“On Demand”
Solutions
“Morphing”
môrf·ing verb
1. Using placeholder HTML elements that have
all the data necessary to transform into
another HTML element (typically heavier in
byte size) on demand
ClickTale found that 78% of user page views
do not reach the bottom of the page
Source: ClickTale Blog, Unfolding the Fold
http://blog.clicktale.com/2006/12/23/unfolding-the-fold/
Keep your eyes on the Net panel...
Sonar
Solution for detecting if an object is visible (on
or near) the screen, and then doing something
Example usage:
sonar.add({obj:”obj_id”, px : 200, callback : function(){...}});
See http://www.artzstudio.com/files/sonar/
Secret Weapon #4:
ESR
(Executive Speed Report)
Executive Speed Report
Provides full transparency on the performance
of AOL websites with a competitive focus
Products and pages are “taggable” so people
can get a view of what they care about
“Self serve” lets anyone manage the URL sets,
ensuring the right pages get measured
Secret Weapon #5:
Auditron
“This is wrong.”
-Lucius Fox, The Dark Knight
Our Secret Weapons
Apache Mods (dims, concat, jsmin)
Friendly Iframe
“On Demand” Solutions (morphing, sonar)
ESR (Executive Speed Report)
Auditron
Top Secret Weapon:
Beacon
Beacon
Loads asynchronously as the first JS object on the
page; small unobtrusive library (2K)
Internally used to track page view, visit, clicks,
time spent, etc.
Sends load time of the page back on clicks
(window.onload time - beacon initialization time)
Currently does not include server response times;
purely front end load time measurement
Our First Experiment
Take a sample of visits
For each visit, compute the average load time
across the pages viewed
Break the visits into 10 groups (percentiles)
based on the average load time
Examine page views per visit of each group,
from fastest to slowest
AOL Autos
Average Page Views per Visit
8
7
6
5
4
10th
20th
30th
40th
50th
60th
70th
Visit Load Time Percentile*
*10th is fastest 10% of the visit sample, 100th is slowest 10%
80th
90th
100th
AOL Money & Finance
Average Page Views per Visit
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
10th
20th
30th
40th
50th
60th
70th
Visit Load Time Percentile*
*10th is fastest 10% of the visit sample, 100th is slowest 10%
80th
90th
100th
AOL Shopping
Average Page Views per Visit
4.5
4
3.5
3
10th
20th
30th
40th
50th
60th
70th
Visit Load Time Percentile*
*10th is fastest 10% of the visit sample, 100th is slowest 10%
80th
90th
100th
Moviefone
Average Page Views per Visit
7.5
6.5
5.5
4.5
3.5
10th
20th
30th
40th
50th
60th
70th
Visit Load Time Percentile*
*10th is fastest 10% of the visit sample, 100th is slowest 10%
80th
90th
100th
Conclusions
Visits experiencing the fastest load times
delivered us the most page views per visit
More study is needed to determine why one
site’s “profile” differs from the other
Dave needs feedback on the methodology, and
other studies to do with this data
Done.
AOL e-mail:
david.artz@corp.aol.com
Personal e-mail:
dave@artzstudio.com
Twitter & AIM:
artzstudio
Blog:
artzstudio.com